Turning my summer blues upside down

​Summer time fishing can bring you the fishing blues as the fish bite less and begin to get weary of lures after tasting steel a few times. I used to really not fish much when the summer heat hit the midwest but I reached a point a few years ago where I just made the decision to really work at the summer bite. I had the summertime blues for that first summer but I was climbing that learning curve.

This brings us to BlueGrass Kayak Anglers, Cedar Creek tournament on June 24th sponsored by Sportsman Warehouse and it was blazing hot and when I say hot it was 75 degrees before the sun came up. The summer bite was in full effect and using my one day I had to check the lake out i quickly ran down my couple of spots and was not happy even texting my buddy AJ complaining about it but that is when I saw my fish finder light up!

Summertime and hot temps stack the bass up in schools usually on main lake points but Cedar Creek does not follow too many rules, finding a monster school in the trees and when i say monster school I mean 75 yards of nothing but giant marks. Being the day before the tourney i was anxious to figure out the bite and even though I had marked the mega school they were not liking anything i was presenting them, I mean nothing not my small texas rigged worm no matter how small I down sized or the crawl or a swim bait or anything soft plastic. Being stumped I decide to do what I would not normally throw in the heat of the summer, I start throwing a small square bill crankbait in a crawl color and bang! Off some trees comes a sweet healthy fat largemouth bass.

That was all i needed landing a couple to see the pattern and I call it a day. Oh and it’s hot like my kayak wanted to melt hot.

Tourney day comes early and I load up on ice and water getting ready for the heat and there are a bunch of friendly faces at the ramp and as we wait till we can get on the water have some friendly banter back and forth. Drew rockets out from the launch and I hop on his tale using him as a tree detector we race through the trees in the dark. Arriving at my spot noticing the size of the school is half it was the day before but, they are still there. I try the worm but no luck not even a sniff, so comes the cranking and it was work getting the bass fired up, I would get them fired up and get a few then it would die and this repeated all day long I didn’t barely move.

Jay Wallen showed up and I was hoping we could get them going together but it just never happened, stupid bass. I caught at least 30 fish all over 17 inches but you had to earn them.

I reached the point where I decided to leave the school I was on all day and start trolling, started catching quality fish but nothing that i could upgrade on. Making my way back I decide to troll by some trees I have found bass on before and my rod got hammered almost ripping out of my hand and my Hobie PA 14 is getting spun around and pulled! BOOM she jumps out of the water and it’s a magnificent bass, truly a beast of a fish . I spend 15 minutes working in this giant to the yak and grabbing my net, I reached down to scoop her up and she turns sideways at the last second and she is so long that she won’t fit in the net and hangs over either side by a couple of inches. Right then the crank bait snags the net and she disappears with a splash to my face.

I literally puked in my mouth at this point, i swallow my pride and just sit back and laughed, I am sunburnt, dehydrated, and now broken. She was something to behold I have personally never fought a large mouth like that before.

I manage to get third in a very competitive field finally getting some summer confidence,

Congrats to Mathew Schaeffer on 1st and Josh Cooper for 2nd . Huge shout out to Sportsmans Warehouse and BlueGrass Kayak anglers for putting on a great event. Couldn’t have done this without my sponsors Strictly Sail and Hobie kayaks